Short and Slightly Sweet, with a Twist

Island MartiniFriday, December 4, 2009

Lemon Twist
Friday, December 4, 2009

Despite my previous post regarding postponing the deadline to Valentine’s Day for this, I was able to sample two cocktails this evening. Reason is because I used mini bottles of lemon rum and gold rum – which means a smaller martini than I would normally make … by about half! So I figured I’d stick to the rum varieties this evening.

The Island Martini is 6 parts gold rum, 1 part dry vermouth, 1 part sweet vermouth, and a lemon twist. It was very tasty. I’m still not convinced that rum constitutes a martini, but I will concede that this IS a cocktail worthy of drinking. Vodka is still my first choice, but I’ll give this one a four star rating. I enjoyed it.

The Lemon Twist is similar, save for being based on lemon-flavored rum. 6 parts lemon rum, 1 part dry vermouth, and a lemon twist. Hmmm. I love lemon drops. This isn’t a lemon drop. I’m not sure what’s missing, probably a good chunk of sugar. The lemon twist might have been better with a sweeter mix – I should have tried it with sweet vermouth instead. Unfortunately I’m not enough of a mixologist to know if that would be what makes the difference or not. As Sue mentioned in a previous post, I think being a bartender vs. a mixologist is indeed a very different skill. I guess it’s the difference between a cook and a chef. I can follow a recipe. Create one? Another thing altogether. To the mixologists who have come up with the drinks I truly love – my glass is raised to you. As for hte run of the mill cocktails and whomever came up with them – hey, you tried. I doubt I could do better. But it does give me something to aspire to! 🙂